Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

I wasn't surprised to see the New York Times banging the terror drums again today. It seems to have become a specialty of the house. My attention was particularly drawn to piece in today's NYT by Eric Pfanner of the Iternational Herald Tribune, which bears this headline: Europe Seeks to Unify Airport Security Rules.

I noticed that headline immediately, because I have good reason to believe it may be misleading...

Nowhere in the article --- or anywhere else that I know of --- is there any indication that "Europe" "seeks" to unify airport security rules. Instead, the article describes what regular readers of The BRAD BLOG --- or of my own nearly frozen blog --- have come to expect: that Britain, represented here by Home Secretary John Reid, is trying to force the rest of Europe to follow it down the garden path that starts with phony terror and leads to totalitarianism.

Based on what we've seen so far, we have no reason to believe John Reid and every reason to be suspicious.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

... and I sure hope somebody comes along and starts one!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Further to yesterday's post about Open Voting Consortium and Raging Grannies working together to resist Hart InterCivic machines on behalf of the voters of San Mateo County, we have bad news and good news.

The bad news is that their effort to postpone an immediate decision in favor of Hart InterCivic has failed. The good news is that the Grannies will keep on Raging. We have a note from the Grannies and a press release describing the meeting.

The press release follows.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Art Levine's new piece at Salon raises their election integrity bar quite a bit --- not a difficult task considering where that bar has been lately.

Prior to the 2004 "election", Salon's coverage was generally quite good; since then it's been dismal, thanks mostly to some outrageous smear pieces from Farhad Manjoo. In fact, Salon's coverage has been so dreadful that the site has been referred to in some quarters as "Saloon", which of course rhymes with "buffoon", which gives me a good way to remember "Manjoo", whose name just wouldn't stick in my frozen brain any other way.

But let's not dwell on those sad times.

Levine's article, "Salon's shameful six", looks at six states --- Arizona, Indiana, California, Missouri, Ohio and Florida --- where vote suppression could cause serious problems in 2006.

If you're not a Salon subscriber, you'll have to watch a short ad to read the whole article. I did; it was well worth the time and effort. But just in case you don't believe me, we have a few short excerpts, below the fold.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Lou and Kitty Pilgrim report on the litigation that is taking place around the country in order to stop the use of paperless voting machines.

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Blogged by Brad from the road...

As has been his practice over the last several months, the primary election opponent to vote-rigging whistleblower turned congressional candidate Clint Curtis was a no-show in a recent televised debate.

Curtis spoke about election fraud (vis a vis Tom Feeney), the Iraq War and the price of gas. Needless to say, he won the "debate" hands down.

With his primary election opponent, Dr. Andy Michaud, failing to appear at events across Florida's 24th Congressional District, does this mean the good Doctor is giving up? Or is there something going on that we don't know about?

The primary is September 5th. Should Clint win, he'll be going mano-a-mano against the well-monied and impossibly corrupt Rep. Tom Feeney --- the very man he claims had asked him to create vote-rigging software back when they both worked at the same software firm (even while Feeney was Speaker of the Florida State House of Representatives.)

For the record, Feeney is now the only Republican congressman who was with lobbyist Jack Abramoff on those golfing junkets to Scotland, now that both Tom DeLay and Bob Ney have dropped out of this November's election. Feel free to donate to Clint Curtis as he takes on Feeney, one of the GOP's top-tier money behemoths!

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Unless you've been under a rock for most of the past week, you already know that people have been arrested in Britain and Pakistan recently, in connection with an alleged plot to bomb flights from Britain to the USA. According to reports of the arrests, the alleged terrorists were allegedly planning to take down 10 or 12 airplanes at the same time, and this grand-scale planning allegedly points to al-Qaeda. You may know quite a bit more than this, of course. Or at least you may think you do. But in point of fact, most of us probably know quite a bit less.

This post attempts to dig beneath the surface, to look at various (mainstream and other) accounts of the events and to try to determine the nature, the scope and the scale of the manipulation that has been going on. It may not point us in the direction of greater truth, but perhaps it can help us to find a direction of fewer lies.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Ginny Ross, one of our friends from the Election Defense Alliance, has posted the video of the beginning of the press conference from DemocracyFest last month in San Diego as the Busby/Bilbray election challenge (due to voting machine "sleepovers" with pollworkers) was just coming to light. Some of us have been anxious to see this ever since Ginny told us she was working on it. And rightly so. The video is a good one. Just click on the picture to see it.

For more on the press conference, please revisit Brad's post of July 18th.

You're more than welcome to disagree with me on this, but I'd say he did a fine job. Then again, what do I know? I'm partially frozen at the best of times.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

At first glance they might seem like odd partners, but take another look: Open Voting Consortium and Raging Grannies are working together in San Mateo County to resist the Chief Elections Officer's plan to introduce EVMs from Hart Intercivic Voting Systems.

They had a meeting Monday night and it appeared to go well. Here's a brief account from one of our friends on the scene:

Good! The more prepared the better, I'd say.

There's a press release describing Tuesday's planned demonstration, after the fold.

Guest Blogged by John Gideon

Tonight Lou discussed the fact that Diebold voting machines and parts can be purchased on-line and at least one of those purchases has revealed a vulnerability in the Diebold TS-R6. The only response Diebold had was that there are only a few thousand of those machines being used as they are being replaced. Diebold obfuscates the truth; there are over 40,000 in use in Georgia and Maryland alone.

Hat-tip to our friends at the Open Voting Foundation who not only purchased the machine at E-bay, but went on to use it to discover one of the "worst ever flaws found in a voting machine" (at least until the next one is found, anyway.)

Video in Streaming Flash format...
Video in Windows Media format...

The text-transcript of tonight's segment on Lou Dobbs Tonight follows in full...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

Clint Curtis needs your help. The computer programmer who says he wrote a vote-rigging software prototype in 2000, at the request of Florida Congressman Tom Feeney, has a chance to oppose Feeney in November's general election. The prospect of such a race --- and the publicity that would flow from it --- has election-integrity advocates all over the country licking their lips in anticipation, but it won't happen unless Curtis wins next month's primary.

His opponent, Andy Michaud, has been virtually invisible. He hasn't really been campaigning; he's hardly even been raising any money! But Curtis takes no comfort in these odd facts. He knows he's vulnerable --- to the machines! (Do you want to see how a vote-rigging program works? Click here to download one; try it yourself and see how easily our democracy can be subverted.)

There is reason to hope for a fair outcome, however. And the reason --- believe it or not --- is at least as ingenious as the vote-rigging software Curtis prototyped for Feeney six years ago.

Curtis has set up a website where voters can register their intention to vote for a particular candidate. Using this system, if a candidate can collect enough information about how many people intend to vote for him, and where they live, he will be in a position to tell whether the numbers from any given precinct have been flipped in favor of his opponent. And if such flipping occurs, the "losing" candidate would have reliable evidence to support a challenge.

Some voters have already registered, but many others don't yet know about the system, and they will have to be contacted by phone. Here's where you come in. Curtis needs volunteers to make phone calls. He can give you all the details; he can even arrange things so you can make the calls for free.

All in all, it sounds like a much more convenient way to support your democracy than waiting for another election to be stolen, going out into the streets, and trying not to be shot at.

As Curtis phrases it: "The democracy of this country and possibly the fate of the world rests on your shoulders. You can actually do something about it."

But here's the big question: WILL YOU? Will you help? Will you donate a few minutes of your time? Will you make a few phone calls in support of transparent, verifiable elections?

Did you say "Yes"? Good! I thought you would!

Please click here and offer Clint Curtis some support. It's really the least you can do for your country, and for your children, and for my children too.

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

In the past few weeks the 9/11 Truth Movement has continued to move forward, propelled by a gentle nudge from a mainstream news source, a solid bump from the publishing arm of a major American church, and a full-fledged jolt from Air America.

The Nudge: CNN's Lou Dobbs Wakes Up To 9/11 Lies

In this short clip, Lou discusses the new book Without Precedent: The Inside Story of the 9/11 Commission, written by 9/11 Commission co-chairmen Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, who claim that the commission was lied to, not once but consistently, by the FAA and NORAD.

Please watch this video. Among other comments, you will hear the following from Lou Dobbs:

The Bump: Official Presbyterian Publisher Issues 9/11 Conspiracy Book

Blogged by Brad from the road...

Apologies in that normally this would have been a siren-worthy item on the day it broke (last Thursday) here at BRAD BLOG had I not been on the road and looking the other way for the most part (as I still am). Particularly since we've been following Diebold's financial malfeasance closely for some time, including breaking the original report of both the Securities Fraud Class Action suit against the company last December, and the SEC's original "informal" (now formal!) investigation of Diebold in May.

Hat-tip to Warren Stewart of VoteTrustUSA.org for picking up news of the now-formal investigation late last week (and to John Gideon who, naturally, noticed in last Thursday's 'Daily Voting News')...

More at VoteTrustUSA...

Guest blogged by Winter Patriot

As always, the news you get depends on where you go looking.

Here's some from the BBC: Violence flares in south Mexico

No kidding? Rigging the 2004 election to gain office? Who could imagine such a thing?